So Guido was idly scanning his hit-logs and noticed the usual blog readers coming from the servers at the Guardian, News International, the Beeb, parliament, the Tory party, various arms of the civil sevice, think-tanks, lobbyists, as well as assorted law firms and investment banks where lawyers, brokers and bankers idle away the August boredom at their screens. The Associated Newspapers server was he noticed pointing to Order-Order.Com more than once yesterday.

Thom Dyke (a lobbyist at spin-merchants Lawson Lucas Mendelsohn) emails today to nominate Ephraim Hardcastle, the Daily Mail’s gossip columnist for the Press Plagiarist of the Year Award. Well it could be a coincidence, but readers, does this piece in today’s Daily Mail –

“This week’s issue of the Spectator – edited by Tory MP Boris Johnson – has a letter from six of his Parliamentary colleagues deploring ‘our decadent society’. They say: ‘Conservatives can choose either to help or prop up the failed ideas of the liberal elite, or answer the people’s pleas for certainty, order and decency.’ Since certainty, order and decency are not emphasised at Mr Johnson’s Spectator, where the fornication of the editor and his pals is currently celebrated by a play entitled Who’s The Daddy?, we may wonder why the letter is published prominently. Perhaps refusing to print it might have drawn even more attention to the activities there.”

– bear a large resemblance to this blog yesterday? Guido is a great admirer of Ephraim’s style and great minds do think alike, so Ephraim is welcome to discuss this with me over a bottle of Margaux (at the expense of Associated Press of course). The Sunday Times’ Atticus is now scrupulous in crediting the blogs he uses for stories, perhaps if more journo’s followed his lead the award would not be needed…

Nominations close October 31, 2005 for the award, which will be presented at a Central London ceremony on Friday, November 4.